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"The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future."
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"The reward for all battles should always be greater than the sacrifice you have to make."

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way."

"A person with low standards will forever be walking. A person with high standard will soon stop walking and start running. Later, they'll soon stop running and start galloping. The next time you see him, he's either flying or soaring."

"When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, 'You can do this. You've got what it takes.' The other sounds like my mother-in-law."

"I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother'sPTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina,and led right to me."She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you."

"Don't be discouraged when your life boils hot. With just a little more toil, you'll reap from the soil. More oil to your elbows. Stay awake and make it happen!"

"Resiliency is the essence of a global positive framework..."

"Follow your bliss. -Joseph Campbell Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve."

"Success is no magic, grab a handful of hope and never let it go till you get there!"
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

"Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart."

"Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose."

"The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable."

"Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves."

"Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are."

"I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don't take a break for many hours - and consequently have breakfast at two or three in the afternoon on good days."

"Lawrence is the supreme poet of Eros. No recriminations, no reproaches, no guilt, no 'morality'. For what's 'morality' but a leash around the neck? A noose? What's 'morality' but what other people want you to do, for their own, selfish, unstated purposes?"

"Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance."

"I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency."
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